The Commerce Department's finding that two EU agriculture subsidies -- the Basic Payment Scheme and sustainable land use (Greening) payments -- are de jure specific is illegal and defies a key past court ruling, exporters Agro Sevilla Aceitunas and Angel Camacho Alimentacion said in an April 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Building off a case currently at the trade court in which the court held that these subsidies are not de jure specific, Agro Sevilla and Camacho also challenged Commerce's definitions of "prior stage product" and "latter stage product," among other things (Agro Sevilla Aceitunas S. Coop. v. United States, CIT #22-00106).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade should dismiss Canadian exporter J.D. Irving's challenge to antidumping duty cash deposit instructions filed under the court's "residual" jurisdiction since it is not a novel issue and claims can be pursued under Section 1581(c), the antidumping jurisdiction, DOJ said in an April 4 brief (J.D. Irving, Ltd. v. United States, CIT #21-00641).
The Court of International Trade remanded parts of the 2018 countervailing duty review on utility scale wind towers from Vietnam in a March 24 opinion made public April 4. Judge Timothy Reif sent the case back to the Commerce Department for it to address evidence submitted by the CVD petitioner Wind Tower Trade Coalition over alleged manipulation of the denominators used in the benefit calculation and to substantiate its conclusion that respondent CS Wind Vietnam didn't import its steel plate, thereby neglecting an import duty exemption subsidy.
The Commerce Department stuck by its use of the Cohen's d statistical test as part of its differential pricing analysis to detect "masked dumping" in antidumping proceedings, offering a more detailed explanation of the practice in April 4 remand results submitted to the Court of International Trade. Responding to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's remand on the issue, Commerce repeatedly stressed that certain statistical assumptions did not need to be true to properly run the test since the test measures the practical rather than the statistical significance of the data and Commerce has the entire population of data rather than just a sample (Stupp Corp. v. United States, CIT #15-00334).
The Court of International Trade should not stay proceedings in an anti-circumvention inquiry challenge because, contrary to the U.S.'s contention, a case currently on appeal will not "dictate" the outcome of the case, plaintiffs HLDS (B) Steel and HLD Clark Steel Pipe Co. said in an April 4 reply brief. Unique elements of the case brought by the plaintiffs undercut DOJ's claim that the unrelated appeal will resolve the matter at hand, the brief said (HLDS (B) Steel SDN BHD v. United States, CIT #21-00638).
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina dismissed a case brought by Oregon-based hemp manufacturer We CBD contesting CBP's seizure of over 3,000 pounds of hemp. In the March 31 order, Judge Frank Whitney said that We CBD's claims were barred by sovereign immunity or moot (We CBD v. United States, W.D.N.C. #3:21-00115).
In its argument disputing the Commerce Department's conclusion that the company is de facto controlled by the Chinese government, exporter Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export Corp. is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to "fundamentally rewrite" this element of antidumping proceedings, the U.S. argued. In its reply to ZMC's opening brief, DOJ said ZMC's stance, if upheld, would shift the burden to Commerce and require the agency to affirmatively prove the existence of government control by a majority shareholder, when the appellate court has already established that this burden is the respondents' (Zhejiang Machinery Import & Export v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2257).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A recent stipulated judgment in a case brought by North American Interpipe granting the importer refunds on Section 232 steel and aluminum duties is relevant to six U.S. steel companies' court actions that are seeking to intervene in challenges to the Commerce Department's Section 232 exclusion denials, the steel companies said. Filing a notice of supplemental authority to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the steel companies said that the settlement is "relevant to the parties' arguments concerning the potential for settlement of these actions" (California Steel Industries, Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-2172).